Interviews

— Christopher Jobson

Last June, writer/director Nia DaCosta teased her upcoming Candyman film (now playing) with a rather unique bit of footage that wordlessly tracked the history of racial injustice in the United States.

— Josh Weiss

An interview with interdisciplinary artist Sarah Fornace and composer Ben Kauffman of Manual Cinema, Chicago’s Emmy Award-winning performance collective. We discuss the essential role of collaboration in their work, the genesis of a new form of multimedia immersive storytelling, and how they uniquely fuse technology and live performance.

— Jennifer Williams

Frankenstein is a well known story, but Manual Cinema have brought new life to it, with shadow puppetry, in this creative adaptation.

— Harriet Wilson

Remember how you used to make shadow rabbits on a wall? Picture a stage filled with vintage overhead projectors creating shadows from paper and acetate figures, interacting with live actors and cameras, feeding live to multiple screens, with live music and multi-channel sound, and using cinematic techniques to create an immersive visual story on stage and screen. That’s what to expect from Manual Cinema, the Chicago-based multi-media performance collective performing at The Broad Stage this weekend, with their production called “Mementos Mori.”

— Sarah A. Spitz

Sarah Fornace had a sense that Manual Cinema, the new performance collective she and some friends had started, was going to work right from the start. She was sitting in the audience of their first official performance and she could sense something happening to the people around her.

— Cristy Meiners

If you still think shadow puppetry consists solely of nimble fingers and paper figures on Popsicle sticks, it’s time to let your imagination grow up.

— Kelsey Klassen

...Enter Manual Cinema, a Chicago-based company that has become known for multilayered productions — where the performance component is the choreographically mind-blowing act of animating a film in real-time, and the narrative is the “film” itself.

— Moze Halperin

Founding member Sarah Fornace, one of its puppeteers, who will also perform as Gretel in the live action, gives us some insight into Manual Cinema’s magical artistic world.

— Michaël Bellon

— Robbert van Heuven

The Chicago-based Manual Cinema puppet troupe recently returned from a week in Iran at the Tehran Mobarak Puppet Festival, where their performances were welcomed with multiple standing ovations.

— Marco Werman

Julia Miller and Sarah Fornace are co-artistic directors and a part of Manual Cinema's visual team. They stopped by to talk about their unique performance art.

— Current State, WKAR

Although Manual Cinema’s principals claim no particular familiarity with film history or theory, their latest show, Lula del Ray, engages them all the same.

— Kyle Westphal

Kyle Vegter is a composer, sound designer, and producer based in Chicago. He co-founded Manual Cinema, a shadow theater/multi-media performance company. He is also a staff member of the two time GRAMMY-award winning new music ensemble eighth blackbird.

— Arlene and Larry Dunn

This weekend, Chicago’s Poetry Foundation plays host to FJORDS, an exciting multimedia adaptation of Zachary Schomburg‘s book of poems of the same name. A collaboration between Manual Cinema and the Chicago Q Ensemble, the production features all manner of performed silhouette, shadow puppetry, and multiply-sourced projections with an accompanying score.

— Jesse Malmed